Korean Job Discussion Forums

[canuckistan]

"Six Frigates" if you like naval history.

[pugwall]

The Cross and the Crescent by Jerald Dirks the history of interaction between the Christian and Islamic world in the middle east is fun.

[Fat_Elvis]

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. A little over the top at times, but an otherwise adequate assessment of the damage done by free market economics. I haven't seen it in Korea yet, sadly.

[WoBW]

Anything by Bryson - for interesting but not too serious stuff. Very witty.

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt - a biography of growing up under crushing poverty in Ireland anround 1930s-1940s.

Three Cups of Tea - An account of an American guy who fights tooth and nail to build schools for girls in mountainous northeastern Pakistan and later Afghanistan.

A History of Knowledge - what it says on the cover, a history of all we know including art, science, literature (where did writing start), religion, politics,....

The Bureau - an interesting history of the FBI.

My Forbidden Face - a diary of a teenaged girl in Kabul at the time the Taliban took over.

The Looming Tower - the background to events leading up to 9/11 and Al Qaida, starting with one Egyptian man's trip to America in 1948.

Dreams of Iron and Steel by Deborah Cadbury - the human story of some of the most challenging engineering projects in the 19th and early 20th centuries (Brooklyn Bridge, SS Great Western, Panama Canal etc.)

Inviting Disaster - an analysis of the human factors behind some well-documented disasters or near-disasters (Concorde crash, Three Mile Island nuclear plant, Challenger, Some oil rig I can't remember, and so on)

An Innocent Man by John Grisham - a tale of the relentless police persecution, wrongful conviction, near-execution, exoneration and tragic death of Ron Williamson, a one-time college baseball star in small-town Oklahoma.

I could go on. All bought in Kyobo or Bandi & Luni's bookstores in Seoul.

I read a lot,

[WoBW]

Bad Lands - a travelogue of a man's journey through some of the supposedly most dangerous countries on Earth. Iraq, Lybia, Cuba, Iran, Albania, Sudan, and - you guessed it - North Korea. Published by Lonely Planet.

The Prosecutors - a journalist is allowed to be a fly on the wall in the Sacremento DA's office for a year. Interesting stuff.

Guns, Germs and Steel - excellent account of how the history of human development led to the world being dominated by caucasian folk of Western European origin by the 20th century. And, why we're all making coin teaching English now rather than struggling to learn Swahili.

What Went Wrong - how the Arab Muslim world went from leading the world in science, literature, art and pretty much everything else a few centuries ago to being left way behind the west.

Skywalking - a former astronaut's memoir of his time at NASA, from the application and selection process through training, his first space flight, his first space walk and on to his retirement from the astronaut program.

[Ya-ta Boy]

Philbrick's 'In the Heart of the Sea' is without doubt the best thing I've read in 10 or 15 years. There is one point when I just gasped, put the book down and sat for just about forever trying to grasp what was happening.

[bgreenster]

I'm currently reading Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty by Bradley K. Martin. It's a really cool, albeit slow at times, book about the history behind the two countries, and how they interact with each other and other nations. He has a lot of information and insight on the leaders, etc. I'm only 1/4 of the way through, but I've already learned a bunch from it.

I also read Guns, Germs, and Steel and enjoyed it. My only issue with the book was that it got quite redundant, mostly because he repeats his overlying theory about 50 times.


After Fidel by Brian Latell is really cool, particularly if you're interested in a more realistic depiction of the Castro brothers.

And finally, while maybe not what you're looking for, I like to read books by the Dalai Lama. Granted, I am Buddhist, so maybe I'm biased, but there's a lot of interesting ideas in his books- it isn't simply religious

All of these I bought here in Korea.

[jajdude]

True Crime books can be good.

[pugwall]

[quote="

What Went Wrong - how the Arab Muslim world went from leading the world in science, literature, art and pretty much everything else a few centuries ago to being left way behind the west.

.[/quote]


I want to read this. Very muchy so.

[Don Gately]

David Simon:

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets

or

The Corner

[Tukkong]

'Freedom at Midnight'. I bought the book at the Ghandi Memorial Museum in Ahmedabad, India.

[crusher_of_heads]

[Khenan]

[pugwall]

[IncognitoHFX]